


Long Orbit

by Fistful_of_Gamma_Rays



Series: Wandering Stars [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Keith (Voltron) is a Mess, Post-Episode: s02e08 The Blade of Marmora, Worldbuilding, but he's trying very hard not to be, in a very slow sense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:14:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 13,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23378932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fistful_of_Gamma_Rays/pseuds/Fistful_of_Gamma_Rays
Summary: He's gotten his answer about the knife. So now what does he do with it?Or: the process of coming to terms with being part alien.
Series: Wandering Stars [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1681486
Comments: 49
Kudos: 101





	1. Chapter 1

The flight back to the castle is stiff and uncomfortable. The two Blade members - the leader, Kolivan, and the big, threatening one - stand a silent guard at the back of the cockpit. Shiro hovers at Keith’s shoulder, tense and quiet. Keith himself has spent most of a day getting the shit kicked out of him and feels it. His left eye is mostly squinted shut, and the cut on his lip stings. The joint lock that ended the third fight left a deep, gnawing ache in his elbow, and his shoulder is hot and swollen under the armor. His head pounds sickeningly with each breath. He focuses on treading the narrow path through the competing gravity wells of the star and the black hole and carefully doesn’t let himself think any further than that. Red’s helping more than he’d like, but he sticks stubbornly to it, ignoring the prickle of eyes on the back of his neck.

He makes it into the hangar and manages to unbuckle his harness without making an idiot of himself. He’s vaguely aware of Shiro helping him balance after he stands up too quickly, but he waves him off and gets down to the midpoint of the ramp unassisted. He tunes out most of the introductions and concentrates on staying upright. His head throbs, and his hair sticks to his face and his breath inside the helmet is hot and close. The conversation drones on and the space inside the helmet gets narrower and stickier. At last, he can’t stand it anymore and pulls it off. The room falls quiet, and he flinches as he feels eyes on him. 

Lance is the first to rally. “Whoa, what happened to you? I was kidding about you picking a fight with them. Mostly.”

Kolivan intervenes before he can snap back a retort. “Your comrade undertook and passed the trial of Marmora.” 

Lance is brought up short. “The what?”

“Did…” Hunk squints at Keith. “Did you join a galra secret society?”

Kolivan, to his faint surprise, redirects his gaze to Keith and inclines his head slightly. “That is up to him. He’s resourceful enough not to be a liability and has galra blood enough to awaken a Marmora blade. He’s won the right to keep the one he carries. Anything else will be his choice.”

“Galra blood?” says Allura into the sudden quiet. Her face is unreadable, but the tone is flinty, sharp-edged. He has to stop himself from taking a step back. 

Lance flaps his hands frantically in the air. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Are you saying that Keith…” 

“…is galra?”

“How?”

“Keith from _Earth_?”

He flinches back at the sudden cacophony, hissing as his shoulder tenses. “ _Yes_ ,” he snarls. “All right? Can we quit it with the twenty questions?” He feels totally exposed, up on the ramp in easy view of everyone. His head throbs sickly in time with his shoulder and he can’t find the right place in the room to look.

“Coran.” Shiro’s voice cuts through the sudden quiet. “Can you get everyone settled?” He turns to Keith. “We should get that shoulder patched up.”

Coran breaches the conversational deadzone without even a second of hesitation. “Of course. Everyone, this way.” Efficiently and implacably, he herds the others towards the exit.

The doors close behind them, and Shiro lets out a breath. “How are you holding up?”

“Feel like shit,” he mumbles.

Something passes quickly over Shiro’s face. “Yeah, you don’t look so good. You need a hand?”

He doesn’t, not really, but he grunts and Shiro moves to his uninjured side and steadies him down the ramp anyways.

The infirmary’s directly adjacent to the hangars and it doesn’t take them long to get there. Just the two of them in the harsh lights and hospital smell makes the castle feel even more like a ghost ship. It’s a relief to be free of the weight of the armor, but peeling the undersuit off the hasty dressing over his shoulder is agonizing. It feels hot and wet under the bandage, and the pulse through it makes his head pound.

Shiro sucks in a breath when they finally get the sleeve down. “Sorry, buddy. I think you’re going to need the pod for this one.”

He grimaces. “Hate the pods.”

“Yeah. Me too.” Shiro’s eyes dart to his shoulder and his lips press into a tense line for a second before he meets Keith’s eyes again. “Short cycle, okay? Probably only an hour or two.” He offers up a thin smile. “I’ll stay here.”

Part of him wants to protest that. Shiro has better things to do than hang around in the infirmary and wait for the pod to finish. But his shoulder throbs and he feels unbalanced and distant. The argument isn’t in him.

“Yeah. All right.”

* * *

He wakes suddenly into a cold, bright space. He tries to twist away from the glare, but there’s something clamped around his upper arms and chest keeping him stationary. There’s enough time for his heart to jolt with the beginnings of panic before the restraints abruptly release and the pod ejects him. He stumbles forward into the sterile, antiseptic smell of the infirmary, and thumps to a halt as he’s caught.

“Easy. I’ve got you.” 

Shiro. He breathes in and blinks until things come into focus. Shiro watches him carefully, something in the line of his shoulders relaxing as the room starts to make sense again.

“How’s the shoulder?”

The last bit of disorientation lifts as the memory of the trial and its end slams into him. He can’t quite bring himself to look Shiro in the eye.

He swallows, focuses on the question. Rolls the shoulder experimentally. It’s sore, but it’s the sore of the day after a wrong fall, not the biting pain of a new injury. The stiffness in his elbow is gone, and his head is tender, but the pounding has subsided.

“Better,” he answers.

Shiro’s hands relax and fall away from his shoulders, and he hears him exhale. “Good.” His voice thins, flattens out to a dangerously level tone. “They really did a number on you.”

He shrugs carefully, crosses his arms. “I signed myself up for it.”

“That wasn’t a fair fight. They didn’t have any right to throw you into that.”

Something in his chest heaves in a slow roll like a wave on the open sea and he glances away. It’s obvious that no one had expected or wanted him to awaken the blade. It’s not a trick or a fluke or a lie that he did. It’s grounding, in a way. He’s not sure he can explain this to Shiro. 

“I’m sorry,” he says instead. “That I took the knife down there without telling you. I had to know.”

Shiro studies him for a long moment. “I can understand that,” he says at last, his expression unreadable.

“Does it bother you?” he blurts out.

There’s a sharp intake of breath, and then he goes stiff as he’s crushed into a one-armed hug, Shiro’s left arm awkwardly wrapped around his bicep to avoid his still-sore shoulder.

“No. No, of course not.”

Something in his chest unknots, and after a second, he gets himself together enough to sling an arm around Shiro, eyes squeezed shut and face mashed into his shirt. They stay there for a handful of breaths, and then Shiro’s grip loosens and he holds Keith at arm’s length.

“Does it bother you?” he asks, eyes sharp.

He swallows, has to look away. “I’m not sure.”

“Don’t let it.” Shiro watches him, expression serious. “If you ever want to talk about it, I’ll listen. But it doesn’t change anything.”

He’s pretty sure it’s not that simple. “Thanks,” he says anyway.


	2. Chapter 2

It’s already late in the ship’s cycle and when Shiro unsubtly suggests that he ought to get some rest instead of sabotaging the half-done healing the pod did, he doesn’t bother protesting. He hesitates in front of the cot, the knife in his hand. The wrappings on the hilt are gone, somewhere in a recycler on the Marmora base by now, and the sigil casts a dim light into his palm. He closes his hand around it, the bare grip unfamiliar, and then grimaces and shoves it under his pillow anyway.

His dreams are muddled adrenaline echoes, and he sleeps fitfully. When he finally wakes for good, the ship is still barely in night cycle. He lies there in the dark for a minute, mind empty and drifting, and then he shifts and the lingering ache at his shoulder brings the previous day back to him. He rolls upright and digs under his pillow, finds the still-bare hilt of his knife.

He traces the pommel with his thumb for a long minute, gathering his courage, and then unsheathes it and holds it out in a forward grip. He takes a breath and tries to find that same sense of resonance, of certainty. For a half a second, he flounders blindly, but then it clicks home, like a key turning a lock. The hilt heats in his hand, and he has to brace his wrist against the sudden weight.

He inspects it numbly, absently shifting his grip against the blade’s offset balance. He’d thought it would be a relief to know for certain, but he just feels unmoored, unsure what to do with the knowledge. He spends another minute stubbornly staring at it, but the blade isn’t giving up any more secrets, and he lets out a frustrated breath and fumbles his way back towards that mental state change. It comes quicker this time, and the knife’s grip becomes familiar again. He stuffs it back into its place and goes to off to shower. 

By the time he’s done, it’s late enough for the others to be up. He doesn’t really want to deal with anybody and thinks about skipping breakfast, but that’ll just make it more of an event when he does show up, so he grits his teeth and heads to the mess.

He can hear Lance and Hunk bickering indistinctly from the hall, but they go quiet when he opens the door. Everyone’s staring at him. His shoulders hunch, and he fights the urge to cross his arms. Hunk’s got a blank, deer-in-the-headlights look splattered all over his face, and he can see Lance opening his mouth to say something. 

Shiro cuts him off. “You look better.”

“Yeah,” he says stiffly, and goes to sit opposite him. Pidge is wedged into her usual corner of the table, looking only marginally awake, hunched over a mug of the awful stimulant tea they got at the last stop. She gives him a bleary glance as he settles next to her and shoves the teapot towards him.

Hunk pulls his hands out of the oven mitts to wipe them down nervously on his apron. “Yeah. You. Uh. You looked pretty wrecked, dude.”

Lance opens his mouth again and Keith braces himself, but all he says is, “I cannot believe you actually went down there and fought all of them.”

Some of the stiffness goes out of his spine. “I didn’t just fight all of them,” he protests.

“You fought _enough_ of them.”

“Shut up,” he retorts, but it’s rote, with no heat behind it.

Hunk’s timer chimes, and the table’s focus shifts to the plausible flatbread he extracts from the warmer. The conversation lurches back onto familiar tracks (the experiment is quickly dubbed “Believable Bread”), and slowly, Keith relaxes. Shiro catches his eye and silently gives him the ‘ok?’ hand sign. He returns it, and Shiro smiles tentatively and snaps out a thumbs-up before pulling the basket of red, prickly fruit over to their end of the table. Pidge matter-of-factly steals the piece he takes, and he rolls his eyes and takes another two, placing the extra firmly on her plate.

Usually Allura is one of the first to the mess, but today they’re almost halfway through by the time she arrives. She stops in the doorway, and there’s an uncomfortable little lull in the conversation. He can’t make anything of the tight, blank expression she’s wearing, but her eyes land on him and he feels himself go still.

“Allura!” Lance waves frantically from the other end of the table. Allura gives a start, and the moment shatters. “Look at this thing Hunk made! It’s bread!” Lance’s face scrunches up and he teeters his hand in the air. “Well, not really bread. But close enough!”

Allura’s expression dissolves into familiar bewilderment as she focuses on the other side of the table. “Is it some delicacy?” 

“You bet! You have to try some!”

She blinks several times and picks her way over to the seat by Lance, out of her usual position next to Shiro. Keith feels his shoulders guiltily relax, and Shiro watches her go, his expression thoughtful.

* * *

Afterwards, they meet with the Blade members in one of the conference halls to discuss plans. The threatening blade’s name turns out to be Antok. He keeps the mask on and looms behind Kolivan as the latter sits at the table across from Allura. It might be a bid to intimidate, but it might also be that none of their chairs will actually fit him. His proportions are as different from Kolivan’s as Keith’s are, though in entirely the opposite direction.

Kolivan wastes no time on niceties. “If we are to strike a decisive blow, we must act quickly.”

Allura’s mouth thins. “Agreed. But we cannot rush in without adequate preparation.”

“We have an agent stationed in the Emperor’s flagship, but we believe his position may shortly be compromised. If we are to take advantage of his intelligence, we cannot delay.”

“What do you suggest?” asks Shiro.

“The fleet is due to pass through Aluk-At within the next movement. It’s a good point for an ambush.”

“Aluk-At?” mutters Coran, frowning. His expression clears abruptly. “Alug-Athlat you mean?” He shakes his head. “Surely not. Why, it boasted one of the largest standing fleets in the Empire.”

Kolivan’s brow raises. “That has not been the case for many centaphoebs. Not since it was on the Empire’s frontier.”

There is an awkward silence, and Shiro clears his throat. “You may find us slightly out of date.”

“Out of date.”

Allura’s face is set and hard. “Our last information dates from the time of Zarkon’s betrayal,” she says stiffly. “My father’s last act was to hide the castle, Coran, and myself.”

“I see,” says Kolivan after a tense silence. For a long moment, he considers them inscrutably. Behind him, Antok subtly shifts his weight. Finally, he flicks an ear. “Then you will require briefing on the current situation. Do you have a map?”

* * *

The talks last most of the day. Keith’s pretty sure Kolivan would have preferred to keep going. He lectures implacably and thoroughly for several hours on Empire policy, infrastructure, and astrography, with no sign of slowing down. It clearly grates on Allura. He can’t blame her, can’t imagine what it must be like to find the world you knew so thoroughly destroyed. For the most part, she stays stonily focused on Kolivan and Antok, but every once in a while, her gaze wanders to him. He catches the blades watching him a couple of times too. A neutral, assessing look from Kolivan as he expounds on a point, or a faint tilt of Antok’s head in his direction. The attention - from all of them - leaves him feeling on edge and out of place, like another guest at the table. By the end of it, he just wants to find somewhere quiet to hole up away from everyone else.

He winds up going to the observation room. It’s empty, the wide half-circle of stiff-backed altean chairs waiting for an audience that won’t arrive. He spares them half a glance before going to sit on the low steps in front of them. On the enormous screen that takes up the opposite wall, the Marmora base is a dim shadow against the polarized light of its dying star. He reaches for his knife out of habit, but his fingers meet the unwrapped hilt. After a second of indecision, he pulls his hand back. Instead, he worries at the sleeves of his jacket, tracing the stitching inside the cuffs back and forth and focusing on the smooth pattern of the thread under his fingers while he watches the slow transit of an asteroid across the screen’s camera.

He’s been there for some time when a noise from over his shoulder startles him. He looks up to see Pidge at the door, a tablet tucked under her arm. She squints at the screen a moment, and then makes her way over to sit down next to him on the steps.

“Nice view.”

“Yeah.”

A few seconds of silence hold, and then she shifts uncomfortably. “I got something for you.”

He blinks, surprised, and looks over at her.

She bites her lip for a second and then bulls on. “Look, don’t take this the wrong way, okay? You don’t have to take it if you don’t want to.” She pushes her glasses up on her nose. “I found some translations of galra… fables? I guess? In the castle archive.” She draws her knees up to her chest and extends the tablet out to him. 

He stares at the it, feeling strange and off-kilter. It hadn’t occurred to him that there might be galra stories written down somewhere. “I didn’t know the castle had anything like that.”

“Me neither.” She shrugs stiffly. “I found it by accident a while ago. Didn’t really seem worth telling anyone about. But I remembered it last night and I thought you might want to see it too.” There’s an awkward pause and the corner of her mouth ticks up. “You can tell me to go to hell if you want.”

He hesitates for a long moment. He doesn’t exactly want to tell her to go to hell, but it’s more of that exposed feeling of having all of his private fears and insecurities made horribly public. Still, he’s weirdly touched by the gesture. It’s a thoroughly Pidge thing to do. And he is curious. Slowly, he reaches out to take it. “Thanks.”

Pidge’s shoulders relax a little, and she wraps her arms around her knees. “I read some of them.”

“Yeah?” he says cautiously.

“Yeah. Not what I was expecting.” She casts him a sideways glance. “No spoilers.” 

“Huh.”

They sit there and watch the screen quietly for a minute. After a while, Pidge clears her throat. “Hey. If you do read any of them, let me know?” 

He turns his head and she shrugs. “I kind of want to talk about them with someone.”

He squints at her. “Are you saying you want to have… what, galra book club?”

She grins. “Exactly. Galra book club.” The smile fades, and her expression goes serious again. “No pressure. But if you want to…”

On the screen, the star belches out a jet of plasma and the base’s shields flare in a brief aurora. He gingerly runs his thumb back and forth over the smooth edge of the tablet. “I’ll think about it.”

* * *

Much later, he sits on his cot and traces the edge of the tablet again, his thumb coming to rest over the shallow well of the power button. It feels like he’s standing at a threshold. An event horizon. Two or three heartbeats pass, and then he takes a breath and presses it home. 


	3. Chapter 3

**_The Road to Gevra_ **

  
_Once, during their travels, Thinker and the Witch met by chance on a hill._

_“What luck!” said Thinker. “I have wished to meet you, for I have heard you are clever.”_

_“And I you,” said the Witch, “for I’ve heard you think yourself wise.”_

_“Surely you’ve heard of how I broke the siege at Avgutar and the trick I played on King Five-Eyes. I’ll wager you can’t match that!”_

_“Hah!” said the Witch, “Haven’t you heard how I found Regir-Thur’s heart in a grain of sand, or how I brought the oceans to Bargut? I’m more than a match for you!”_

_They argued until they were both exhausted, but neither could believe the other more clever. At last they spied a soldier traveling down the road to Gevra._

_“Well, listen,” said Thinker. “Let’s put it to the test. Soldier is a straightforward man, not easily distracted. Let us see which one of us can lead him astray.”_

_“A fair contest, friend. I accept.”_

_Thinker and the Witch went down the road to prepare. Thinker dug a pit and roasted a flank of black rhug, basted with hot red agam, so tender that it flaked at a touch. The scent wafted over the road, so thick it could be tasted. When Soldier came down the path, his stomach growling, Thinker called out to him._

_“Friend, I’ve caught a rhug, but there’s too much for me to eat. Will you help? A soldier on the road needs a hearty meal.”_

_Soldier’s mouth watered, and he slowed. “I can’t abandon my mission, but surely a taste wouldn’t hurt.”_

_“Of course!”_

_Thinker held out a plate. Soldier took a spoonful, but he had never seen rhug in agam before and got only the agam. Soldier’s mouth burned, and his eyes watered. Coughing, he gave the plate back to Thinker._

_“Oh! I think you may have poisoned me! Thank you for the offer, friend, but I must continue.” And he quickly passed Thinker by._

_The road grew difficult, climbing through high rocks and narrow passes, but Soldier traveled on, panting as he tramped up and down the trail. At the top of a high hill, the Witch called out to him. “Traveler, help a poor merchant! I’ve bought too much of this fine liquor and my pack beast can’t carry it all through the mountains. Take a drink and lighten my burden!” And she held out a cup of strong gurril, sweet with age._

_Soldier wavered. “I’ve orders to hurry, but I’ve never been so parched in my life. Surely a taste won’t delay me too much.”_

_He took the cup from the Witch, but Soldier was used to mild barracks-gvur, and drank the whole thing down in a single gulp. His throat burned, and he choked for breath._

_“Oh!” He gasped, “I think you’ve been cheated! Trust me friend, you’re better off pouring it out.” And he continued on his way._

_Soldier traveled on, and eventually he came to a fork in the road. The right path was level and well-paved, but the left was torn, the stones destroyed and the wayposts smashed. Thinker called out to him. “Stay, traveler, are you going to Gevra?”_

_“I am.”_

_“You’d better take the road on the right - there’s been trouble on the left-hand route. A great beast’s been seen - all the traders are taking the long way around.”_

_Soldier puffed his chest up. “Well, friend, you’re in luck! I can’t delay my mission, but a strong fellow like myself will clear the road in no time! I’ll take the left-hand path, and you can follow after me when it’s safe.” And he marched on._

_Far down the path, he found the beast Thinker had set on the road, and slew it after a mighty battle. He limped on, exhausted and wounded, until he came to another fork in the road. To the left, the path continued on through rough country, up hills and over dikes, through thorns and brush. On the right, it ran gently through a valley shady with green growth. The Witch called out to him. “Traveler, what’s happened to you? You look like death! Are you going to Gevra?”_

_“I am.”_

_“Then take the left path - surely you won’t make it on the right-hand road in your condition.”_

_Soldier examined the valley’s easy terrain and restful dark. “Friend, I think you must be mistaken. I’ve been to Gevra before and it’s a shithole. A path so pleasant as that can’t possibly lead there.” And he continued on his way._

_“Who knew such a simple man could be so hard to persuade?” said the Witch. She put her hands together and thought. “If he will not be persuaded, then I must turn him aside by force.” And she dressed herself in her teeth-and-bone armor and her death mask helmet and took up her spear and laid in wait by the road._

_“I’m simply too clever for him!” said Thinker. “Such a simple man will only be convinced by force.” And he put on his red bronze mail and his five-eyed helm and took up his hammer and laid in wait by the road._

_Finally, weary and limping, Soldier came in sight of Gevra._

_“At last! What a strange journey it’s been. Just a little farther, and I’ll have a hearty meal and a bunk in the garrison waiting for me!” And he picked up his pace and began to jog towards the gates._

_As he rounded a corner, Thinker jumped out with a roar, the glare of his armor bright as the sun, his hammer humming through the air._

_Soldier, exhausted by the journey, was terrified. “I’ll never win against such a monstrous opponent in my condition! I’ll have to outrun him!” And he ran as fast as he could for Gevra, Thinker following after._

_As he came around the next corner, though, the Witch leapt out, her teeth-and-bone armor rattling like thunder, her spearblade like a lightning strike._

_“Mother of Stars,” said Soldier, “there’s another one! I’ll be lucky to escape with my life!” And he ran even faster for Gevra._

_The Witch ran to follow him, but Thinker, already in pursuit, came running down the road and crashed into her. The glare off Thinker’s armor was so bright they were both blinded, and the rattling of the Witch’s armor was so loud they were both deafened. “Aha!” they thought, each believing the other to be Soldier, “I’ve caught him!” and they began to fight._

_Soldier ran on faster than he’d ever run in his life and reached the gates of Gevra to deliver his message. He had a hearty meal and a comfortable bunk and a good story to tell. As for Thinker and the Witch, they beat each other till they couldn’t move before they realized what had happened and neither has forgotten it since._


	4. Chapter 4

Keith sits for a long time in the dark room, lit by the glow of the tablet’s screen. He’s not sure what he’d expected from a galra story. Something bloodier, maybe. Grimmer. The Empire is all militaristic bombast, and even the Blade seem unrelentingly dour. The story of the soldier on the road to Gevra seems too simple for them, too neat. Like a fairytale. A story for children.

He wonders if it’s a story his mother had told him.

He runs his thumb carefully along the tablet’s edge. His father had never said much about her - just that she’d been tall and clever. That she’d told him stories as a baby and that she’d left behind her knife for him when she’d gone. 

He’s abruptly struck breathless with a visceral stab of anger for his father. So many years with just the two of them alone in that little house and that’s all he knows about his mother. Not a word more about the kind of person she’d been, or what she’d done, what she’d liked. Not a single photograph or memento, other than the knife. Not even a name. Not a breath that she might have been an alien.

The memory of the trial yawns open under him, and he has a sudden, vivid flash of his father standing tall and solemn against the thunder of a marching army. 

The anger turns to ashes, leaving only a vague, familiar ache behind. He swallows against the thickness in his throat.

“‘Tall’,” he mutters with sudden, resigned humor. “Yeah, Dad. I bet she was.”

He can guess she’d been a blade now. That she’d been a soldier, and maybe a spy. At some point she must have run the same trial he had. It’s better than imagining her as one of the faceless Empire troops, but he can’t match the Blade’s severity up to the easy crow’s feet at his father’s eyes or the dusty little plot of land in the desert. It’s hard to imagine someone like that telling bedtime stories.

Slowly, he scrolls back through the text. He wonders if his mother had known any of the other stories it mentions. If she’d known how Thinker broke the siege at Avgutar. How the Witch brought the oceans to Bargut. If she could tell him if Gevra was a real place, or what a five-eyed helm or a rugh was. Whose bones the Witch’s armor was made of. Who had told stories about Thinker and Soldier and the Witch originally and where they’d come from. 

He falls asleep with the tablet still in his hands.

* * *

He runs into Allura on his way to breakfast. 

She halts in her tracks when she sees him, and her expression draws out to a tense mask. Unsure what to do, he stops as well. It lasts only a half a second before she’s moving again. He steps to the side to let her through, and she jerks a tight nod to him as she passes, head up and spine straight. “Keith.”

“Allura,” he replies, but she’s already through the door. He’s left with a queasy knot of guilt resting heavily in his gut, and he lingers at the door for a moment to bury it.

“Huh. Something’s really eating her.” 

He turns to find Lance in the hall behind him. Immediately, he straightens his expression and shoves his fists into his pockets. Lance doesn’t pay any attention to this, still looking towards the mess door, his face screwed up in a scowl. With a sniff, he draws himself up and advances on the doorway. Keith starts as he claps a hand to his shoulder in passing.

“Just leave this one to the expert, man. She’ll come around.”

The door opens and closes, and behind it, he can hear a sudden loud exclamation. “Hunk! Are you doing the Maybe Muffins? Allura, come over here and try this!”

By the time Keith actually enters the mess, Lance has drawn Allura to the other end of the table and he and Hunk have her cornered with the plate of Maybe Muffins. She winds up in the same seat she’d taken the day before, and he can see Shiro frowning thoughtfully as he watches her. But he sits down across from Shiro, and Pidge lazily shoves the teapot his way, and in the stream of the conversation, it is barely noticeable that Allura does not once glance his way.

* * *

Kolivan continues relentlessly on his quest to cram as much strategically relevant information down their throats as possible, and the the map floating over the table is growing thick with notes in hastily scrawled altean. It is meticulously detailed, unquestionably important, and excruciatingly boring. 

Keith finds his attention drifting, despite his best efforts. He studies Kolivan and Antok, the former stonily expounding on shipping lanes while the latter hulks silently behind him, and wonders if his mother had been cut from the same stoic cloth. Had she known either of them?

His thoughts crash to an abrupt halt. Is she still out there somewhere? 

He freezes in place, and his eyes stay a little too long on Antok. His head tilts, and he catches Keith staring. Slowly, his head turns to face him and he stares back. Maybe under other circumstances he’d look away, but he finds he’s no more inclined to let Antok intimidate him now than he’d been on the base, and they’re locked into an impasse. One minute passes, then two. Finally, Antok looks away and lets out a quiet, rasping chuff. Kolivan pauses mid-sentence, and looks up at Antok and then, alarmingly, at Keith. The rest of the room follows his attention, and he has to control a flinch at the sudden stares. After a second, Kolivan’s lip twitches faintly. Then, without comment, he turns back to the briefing. The others refocus, but Shiro frowns slightly, glancing back and forth between him and Antok for a few seconds. Pidge watches him thoughtfully. Keith looks away, completely unsure of what’s just transpired.

Kolivan continues, apparently unperturbed. “You are likely to encounter Empire convoys in Ipaga and Uru. A ship this size will be difficult to hide, but you may be able to resupply in Xirrup.” 

Allura hackles, eyeing the map. “Ipaga and Uru hardly seem strategically important, and Xirrup has been a major trade hub for most of recorded history.”

Surprisingly, it is Antok who answers her. “The mining operations on the fourth planet of Ipaga and the moons of the sixth of Uru are vital to heavy arms manufacturing in the sector. Xirrup has been a ghost system since its tantalum reserves were depleted twenty centaphoebs ago.”

For an second, Allura’s expression cracks open, and something raw and hurt slips out. It ices over almost instantly. “I see.”

“I make the suggestion only,” says Kolivan. “You may verify it as you like.” It is bluntly, evenly delivered, but there is no sting in it.

Allura meets his eyes, her own hard and level. “Of course,” she responds tightly. “We will.”

Kolivan considers her for a long moment. “You will do as you must,” he states, and this time it rings like a judgment.


	5. Chapter 5

Keith finds Pidge holed up in the long workroom by the hangars. She’s hunched over her laptop next to a dubious clutter of tools and an ugly, boxy thing that looks like it’s probably supposed to be part of the castle’s innards. She doesn’t bother to look up when he enters, just raises a hand.

“Hey.” She squints at something on the screen as if it physically pains her and her lips move silently. After a second, she drags her gaze over to him. “You want to make yourself useful, since you’re here?”

He shrugs. “What do you need me to do?”

She points at the thing on the workbench. “I need you to take that apart and help me figure out why it’s not working.”

He eyes it carefully. It’s more-or-less square, with what looks like an intake on one end and an exhaust on the other. A little hatch is popped open on its back, and the cables from Pidge’s laptop and a battery pack snake into it. “What is it?”

“It’s part of the ventilation system. It’s supposed to do a bunch of filtration and monitor atmospheric mix and contaminant levels, but it doesn’t do any of that right now.” She directs a venomous glare at the screen of her laptop. “The self-diagnostics say it’s _just fine_.”

“Huh.” He comes around to the other side of the bench and sets to work on the line of fasteners down the filtration unit’s side. The repetitive precision of the task is soothing, and he works in silence for a while, building up his courage while Pidge prods at her keyboard.

“I read one of those stories,” he says at last. 

She looks up from the screen. “Is this galra book club?” she asks cautiously.

The corner of his mouth twitches. “Yeah. Galra book club.”

“Yesssss,” she hisses slowly. “Which one?”

“The first one. The soldier going to Gevra.”

“Oh, yeah! I liked that one.” She pauses thoughtfully. “Way funnier than I thought it would be.”

He blinks. “Funny?”

Pidge gestures expansively with one hand. “Sure - I mean, Thinker and the Witch think they’re so clever, and they go to all this trouble, and then Soldier keeps screwing up their plans just by being kind of dumb and uncultured. I bet it’s really funny with someone telling it aloud.”

His brain supplies a brief mental image of Kolivan solemnly intoning, _“I’ve been to Gevra and it’s a shithole,”_ and he snorts. But at the same time… yeah. He can imagine it being a funny story with somebody telling it, and something in his chest catches a little at the idea that it might be meant to make people laugh. “I hadn’t thought of it like that,” he admits.

“Yeah?”   
  
There’s a brief pause as he pries the cover off the filtration unit and they both lean over to peer inside. Pidge’s cables disappear into a white box mounted to the side of the chassis. A fan assembly takes up most of the rest of the space. Pidge scowls at it.

“I’m going to toggle things one by one. Tell me what you see.”

“Okay.”

She retreats to the laptop and he hears the click of the keyboard. “What did you think of it?” she says after a second.

He looks down at his hands gripping the casing and mentally fumbles for words. “It seemed really old.” He knows how dumb that sounds as soon as it leaves his mouth. He can feel the tips of his ears turning red. He tries again. “Like… like the Odyssey, or the Iliad. Like something that comes from such a different time that no one knows what half of it really means.”

Pidge’s typing pauses and she holds up a hand and narrows her eyes at him. “Hold up a second. _You’ve_ read the Odyssey?”

He scowls, stares into the filtration unit. “There wasn’t a lot to do in the desert, all right?” It had been in the dusty pile of books his father had left in the shack, a beaten-up paperback rife with dogears, ‘Kogane’ scrawled on the inside cover. He can feel his shoulders inching towards his ears and forces them down. “Blue light on the top of the control box,” he mutters.

“Damn it.” Pidge hits something on the keyboard and the light turns off. “Sorry,” she says after a second. “That was kind of a jerk question.”

He shrugs. There’s another keyboard click. “Blinking blue light. Uh. Two long, one short.”

“You’re right,” she says. “It does kind of feel like that. I wonder how much of that is the translation.”

He glances up and she catches his eye and shrugs. “It’s an english translation of an altean translation of a galra story. Maybe some of the weird stuff like the teeth armor or the five eyes thing is just… gaps where there wasn’t a good word for something.”

He thinks about that, about the missing pieces and awkward half-right meanings that come with the translators they use, and is ambushed by a sudden, powerful desire to strip that story bare of its layers of interpretation and see the core of it clearly. “I guess there’s no way to know,” he says quietly after a moment. He pauses. “Still blinking. Long-long-long.”

There’s a longer string of keyboard noises. “I guess we could ask the Blade,” Pidge advances dubiously.

He shoots her an intensely skeptical look. The thought of Kolivan or Antok engaging in Galra Book Club borders on ludicrous.

She rolls her eyes at him. “Not now, obviously. But if we’re going to be working with them, maybe we’ll get the chance.” She hits something and there’s a sudden, upsetting hum from the filtration unit. The light blinks yellow. 

He waves a hand in front of the intake. “I think the fan’s stuck. Can you kill the power?”

They unplug the battery pack, and after some frustration, manage to disassemble the fan cage and dislodge a disgusting wad of something from the side of the casing. When they’ve got the assembly back together again, Pidge enters a command and the thing immediately sucks in enough air to plaster her shirt sleeve against the intake with a horrific slapping noise. She screeches like a startled cat and he nearly suffocates laughing while she glares at him. Once she’s unstuck and recovered her dignity, they solemnly fistbump before putting the exterior casing back on. 

“Hey,” she calls out to him as he’s leaving. “If I find any more translations, do you want me to send them to you?” She says it a little hesitantly.

“I…” Another flash of that hungry, painful curiosity strikes him and he clears his throat. “Yeah. Thanks.” 

* * *

By now, he’s mostly slept off the beating he took in the trial, and his usual insomnia’s back in full force. He thinks about reading another one of the stories, but he’s too restless to sit still and Shiro still has his name on the ‘banned’ list for the training room, so he paces the castle halls aimlessly for a while before turning towards the mess.

Finding the blades there before him is startling, to say the least. 

They’re packed onto the long benches. Kolivan manages to maintain his dignity, but Antok has to hunch ridiculously over the too-short table. The teapot and two cups sit between them, faintly steaming with something that smells bitter. The mess light is off, but they look up as he enters, eyes gleaming, and he has a sudden, uncomfortable epiphany about his sleeping patterns. 

Antok, for the first time he’s seen him, has his mask down. His features are broad and heavy, the skin around his eyes streaked white with fine scales. A faint, symmetrical row of pits runs under his cheekbones, outlined in the same white. His eye catches Keith’s, and for a second he thinks they’re about to be locked into another staring contest, but then Kolivan leans forward slightly.

“Antok.”

Antok’s brow rises and he deliberately looks away with a faint twitch of his lips. “At ease -” Keith’s translator glitches momentarily and he catches half a sharp consonant “- kid. You passed your trial fairly. I’m not interested in another fight unless you give me a reason.”

He blinks. “That’s… good to know.”

Kolivan nods to him. “Is your shoulder recovered?”

“Yeah,” he answers, a little thrown by the inquiry. “It’s fine now.”

“Good.”

Kolivan seems content to let this lie, and after a second, Keith makes his way to the cupboard where they keep the water packs. There’s an awkward stillness while he extracts a pack and jams a straw into it, but like hell is he going to let himself be chased out. He leans up against the counter and sips at the water, and slowly, the quiet levels out into something a little less tense. Kolivan lifts the teapot and pours for himself and Antok, and the bitter smell in the room strengthens. It’s an almost homely scene, and the idea of the blades participating in Galra Book Club suddenly seems a little less laughable.

He can imagine someone who might be his mother doing this.

Antok breaks the silence. “Your princess does not like galra.” 

The tone is nothing more than mildly observational, but he goes still. It’s not something anyone can miss, but hearing it aloud somehow solidifies it. “No,” he says after a moment, “she doesn’t.” They’re both watching him closely, waiting for something. “She’s not going to go back on her word or anything. She might not like it, but you can trust her.”

Antok produces a low hum. “Very generous.”

He meets Antok’s eyes deliberately. Grief and anger are things he understands, and if Antok wants to make something of Allura’s right to them, he’s willing to oblige. “She’s got her reasons.” Antok’s eyes flick away from his.

Kolivan examines him for a long while. “Most people do.” It’s a smooth statement of fact, not a whisper of anger or resentment in the words. “You know the princess. If you trust her, then we will rely on your judgment.”

He stares, not sure if that’s intended as a dig, but both blades look utterly serious. Awkwardly, he nods. “Yeah. I trust her.” 

Kolivan inclines his head. There’s no more conversation between them, but he finishes his water while the blades slowly sip from their cups, and when he leaves, they nod to him as he passes.


	6. Chapter 6

**_The Battle of Mount Rudim_ **

  
_After the fall of Vrelim-Ath, King Five-Eyes pursued Warlord across the plains, his army swollen with new conscripts. Warlord withdrew, her force exhausted, till they came to the Harrugim mountains, where they could retreat no more._

_King Five-Eyes saw this, and gathered his troops before Mount Rudim, where Warlord had made camp. “The enemy is cornered now,” he proclaimed to his army. “We will put an end to them. You soldiers who strike true in my service may earn your freedom, but any who hesitate will regret it.” And he ordered his officers to gather five phalanxes for a charge._

_Warlord saw the army massing, and, heart heavy, she called her officers to her and addressed them. “Friends, King Five-Eyes is upon us. The path behind us is closed - we have no option but to hold fast and bite hard. If you will leave and go back to your families, there is no shame in it. I will face the King, for this quarrel is between he and I.”_

_King Five-Eyes’ generals lashed their phalanxes forward, driving the conscript soldiers before them like a wave on the ocean. Howling, they broke on Warlord’s defenses. They fought, sword to spear and shield to axe, but at last they drew back, bloodied, for all of Warlord’s soldiers had held fast._

_“Gutless cowards!” shouted the King when his generals told him of the defeat. “Let all who took part be sent to the ferry gangs. If we cannot take a cornered foe in a frontal assault, then we must take them by surprise. Those who serve me well may earn their freedom, but I’ll take a price out of any who fail me.” And he ordered his generals to prepare for a night ambush in the moons’ dark hour._

_Warlord saw that the moons were approaching their confluence. She called her officers to her. “Friends, I fear we face an ambush - we cannot rest until the the Little Moon shows his face again. We are all of us wounded from battle. If would you leave, there is no dishonor in it. I shall stand watch through the nights and days, for this quarrel lies between King Five-Eyes and myself.”_

_It came time for the Great Moon and the Little Moon to take their three nights rest in the sea. Each night, King Five-Eyes’ generals sent the conscript soldiers into the dark to scale the foot of Mount Rudim and ambush Warlord’s camp. But every night when they mounted the sharp cliffs, they found Warlord’s soldiers already awake, for all had stood the long watch. At last, the confluence passed and Warlord’s camp still stood._

_“Incompetents!” bellowed the King. “Let all who failed be put to work in the mines. We cannot defeat an exhausted enemy in the dark? Then we shall gain victory in the light. Those who do not falter may see their freedom, but those who waver will earn my wrath.” And he ordered his generals to put fire to the brush at the foot of Mount Rudim._

_Warlord saw the fires lit across the valley, and knew that King Five-Eyes would not rest easy. She called her officers into audience. “Comrades, the King will put us to the torch - we have nothing to quench the fires with but the clothes on our backs. We are all of us weary. If you would leave, do it with my blessing. I will beat the flames back, for the King’s argument is with me.”_

_King Five-Eyes’ generals drove the conscript soldiers to the foot of Mount Rudim and they ringed Warlord’s camp in flames. The head of the mountain disappeared in the smoke and the conscripts choked and gasped for breath. But Warlord’s soldiers dug trenches with their weapons and beat the fires out with their own clothes and bedding. At last, the air cleared and Warlord’s camp still stood._

_“Cravens!” declared the King. “Let those wretches lay stone on the highway! If we cannot defeat them with fire, we will lay them low with water. If you’d win your freedom, you’ll do as I say, and if you don’t, it’ll go worse for you.” And he ordered his generals to poison the wellspring that fed the waters of the stream Rudimi._

_Warlord saw the troops marching towards the wellspring, and knew that King Five-Eyes had not been stayed. She called her officers to her and addressed them. “Comrades, the King will poison our water supply. We shall have to go thirsty. We are all of us choked and burned. If any of you would leave, I will help you do so. I shall stay and endure, for the King’s quarrel is with me.”_

_King Five-Eyes’ generals sent the conscript soldiers to the wellspring, where they poisoned it. For five nights the stream Rudimi ran black, and a rotten stench rose from the waters, and none in Warlord’s camp dared drink. At last, on the sixth night, the rain came down and flushed the stream clear, and Warlord’s camp stood still._

_“Useless idiots!” cried the King. “Let those fools be put to the sword. If they will endure even this, then there is no help for it. An army is only so good as its commander - you will slay Warlord for me. Without her, they will fall.”_

_Warlord saw the King’s troops go quiet and knew that King Five-Eyes would not let her rest. She took stock of her forces and found them at the end of their strength. She called her officers to her. “Friends, I don’t know what is yet to come. You’ve fought beyond what was needed and I thank you. Rest now, and what comes comes for us all.”_

_The King’s generals chose a conscript soldier as their assassin, armed him with their best armor and finest weapons, and brought him before the King. “Do this for me,” the King said, “and you shall win your freedom and that of your cohort. Should you fail, you and they will regret your existence.”_

_The assassin knelt, and hardened his heart. “I will do what I must for my comrades,” he said._

_“Then do not delay,” said the King._

_The assassin stood and took his leave._

_He traveled first through the field where the battle had been fought, and found the ground still bloody. When he arrived at the stream Rudimi, he found its waters so choked with dead growth he could barely cross. On the other side, he found the earth still burned black and scored with trenches. And when he crept into the camp, he passed the sick tents filled with wounded, barely a fistful of exhausted soldiers standing watch._

_At last, he came to Warlord’s tent. When he entered, he found her waiting, sword drawn at her side. The assassin put hand to throat before her._

_“Warlord, I am sorry. King Five-Eyes has sent me to kill you.”_

_Warlord took up her sword and put hand to throat. “So it must be then.”_

_“Before we fight, I must ask: how did you survive the battle on the plains? The earth there is still wet with blood.”_

_Warlord bowed her head. “My soldiers held fast, though I did not ask them to.”_

_“But how did you live through the night raids with so many wounded?”_

_“My soldiers went without sleep, though I told them there was no shame in retreat.”_

_“But surely the firing of the mountain must have broken their morale.”_

_“They used their own clothes and bedding to damp the flames, though I offered an honorable dismissal.”_

_“And the poisoning of the Rudimi?”_

_“They went without water, though I bade them leave for their own sakes.”_

_The assassin looked and saw that Warlord herself was wounded, her clothes scorched and her skin pale with exhaustion. He laid down his sword and knelt._

_“Warlord, I face a superior opponent. If one of your soldiers said the same, how would you command them?”_

_“I would bid them retreat and take up the fight myself.”_

_Without another word, the assassin took up his sword and returned to King Five-Eyes’ camp, where the generals brought him before the King._

_“Is it done?” asked King Five-Eyes._

_“No. Warlord yet lives.”_

_“Are you a coward, that you would sacrifice your comrades so, or merely a fool?” snarled the King._

_“Neither,” said the assassin. “An army may be only so good as its commander, but you may judge a commander’s worth by their soldiers’ actions.” And he took his sword in hand and fell upon King Five-Eyes._

_The generals shouted and hastened to defend the King, but the soldiers at the door heard the clash of weapons and rushed in. When they saw the King who had sent so many of their comrades to miserable ends at swordspoint, they threw themselves at the generals and joined the fight. King Five-Eyes and the generals were forced to flee. When it was done, the conscripts took command of the army and marched across the plain to the base of Mount Rudim._

_Warlord awaited them at the entrance to the camp, sword in hand. When the conscripts drew near, they knelt and put hand to throat._

_“Give us your orders, commander,” said the assassin, “and let them be worthy ones.”_

_“Let those who would leave do so with free conscience,” said Warlord, “and let those who would fight march with me to Vrelim-Ath.”_

_And so it was done._


	7. Chapter 7

Shiro catches Keith reading in the observation room, sprawled over the one of the uncomfortable altean chairs. Keith resists an irrational urge to hide the tablet as he enters and settles for laying it face-down on his chest and worming himself slightly deeper into the chair’s stiff back. Shiro collapses into the chair next to him with a sigh, legs stretched out, arms akimbo.

“Wondered where you’d gone to,” he mutters.

“It’s quiet up here.”

Shiro stretches with a faint crackle of popping joints. “I need some quiet after today.”

Kolivan seems to have at last satisfied himself that they won’t get themselves killed out of ignorance, and they’ve progressed to charting out their next move. It’s a slower process that any of them would like. The blades are insistent on working with operatives already in place, but Allura is suspicious of plans which rely solely on Blade intelligence. The result is an exhausting spiral of circular suggestions and counter-suggestions.

“I think we’re making progress,” he offers. 

“Mm. We’re starting to close in on something. It needs a lot of work, though.” 

There’s a short silence between them before Shiro awkwardly clears his throat. “Hey. I wanted to ask. Is Allura giving you a hard time?”

His mouth tightens, and he carefully glances away. “She’s not really talking to me now. That’s all.”

“That’s still not all right.”

“It’s fine.”

“That’s not fair to you.”

“It’s not fair to her either to ask her to just ignore what the galra did to her,” he snaps out.

Shiro cuts him a blunt, unimpressed look. “You are not responsible for what Zarkon did ten-thousand years ago.”

“Just leave it, Shiro. I can handle it.”

There’s a pause, and Shiro sighs. “I know you can. All right. I’ll leave it. But I disagree and I’m doing it under protest.”

Keith grunts an acknowledgment and there’s another short silence.

“What are you reading?” 

He takes longer than he should to answer. “It’s a translation of some galra stories,” he mumbles. He hunches in on himself a little without meaning to. He’s not ashamed, but it still feels like he’s admitting to something.

Shiro’s eyebrows climb towards his hairline. “I didn’t know we had anything like that here.” 

“Pidge found them.”

“Huh.” He pauses. “What are they like?”

Keith runs his thumb along the tablet’s side, thinking. “Interesting,” he says slowly. “Really old. Some of them are kind of hard to understand.”

Shiro eyes the tablet. “Could I read some?” he asks after a moment.

He hesitates, and Shiro waves a hand. “You don’t have to. Just curious.”

He shakes his head. “No, it’s fine.” He pulls the text back to the last story and leans precariously over the chair’s arm to pass it over. “Here.”

A couple of minutes tick by while Shiro scrolls through. Keith watches the observation screen and tries not to fidget. Finally, Shiro hands the tablet back, his expression pensive.

“I guess that’s probably not a story anyone tells anymore in the Empire,” he says quietly.

“Yeah.” Keith pauses. “I wonder if that was a real battle.”

Shiro looks over to him. “You think some of it might be historical?”

He shrugs. “Warlord and Five-Eyes show up a lot. And the places in the stories always have names. Like they’re real places that people would know.”

“It’s possible.” Shiro’s fingers tap slowly on the arm of the chair. “Plenty of human stories about historical events. Maybe there really was a Warlord and a King Five-Eyes. Maybe soldiers in Five-Eyes’ army really did rebel.”

“Like the Blade.”

Shiro’s eyes cut over to him, his expression opaque. “I suppose so.”

Keith watches him closely. “You don’t trust them?” he hazards after a few seconds go by without any further elaboration.

“I think they’re exactly what they say they are, and I’m sure they’ll be valuable allies. They’re certainly more than competent.” His lips thin. “I still don’t like what went on in that trial.” 

“Oh.” Keith’s silent for a minute, weighing his words. “I think my mother must have been one of them. She left me the knife.”

“I didn’t know that,” Shiro says quietly.

“Don’t really know anything about her.” He shrugs, glances away. “Always figured she just didn’t want to stick around.”

Shiro’s face gets that pinched expression he wears when he’s accidentally said something too blunt, but he smooths it out quickly. “Leaving behind a blade seems like a pretty big deal,” he says after a moment.

He blinks and goes still, because it does. Leaving behind a blade seems like a huge deal. He breathes out and in, and somewhere in the back of his mind, a tiny, awful hope ignites. “Maybe,” he says.

Shiro knows him well enough not to push, and they stay there together and watch the base and its star until Hunk’s dinner announcement goes out.

* * *

He finds Kolivan and Antok in the mess again during the night cycle. This time, he does it on purpose.

They’re seated in the same places as before, the bitter-smelling pot between them. He doesn’t let himself hesitate at the doorway, and nods to them before making his way to the cabinet with the water packs. Antok’s voice halts him halfway.

“Kid.” He raps the teapot with a finger. “You want some?”

He eyes it suspiciously. “What is it?”

“Daza,” replies Kolivan laconically. “A mild stimulant.”

He hesitates for a long moment, and then shrugs and takes a cup off the counter. It doesn’t smell bad, at least. He sits down at a little distance from the blades and Antok fills the cup. He stares into it for a second, and then wraps his hand around it.

“Poisonous to non-galra,” Antok says as he raises it to his lips. Keith freezes, and Antok gives him a toothy smile. “You and I,” he points, “have about a fifty percent chance of being immune.”

The silence holds for a second, and then Kolivan sighs. “Most species experience mild stomach pains. If you have been subsisting off altean rations, that is likely the worst you can expect.”

He scowls and takes a gulp.

It’s not bad. It’s earthy-tasting, slightly nutty. There’s a bitter aftertaste, but it’s not unpleasant. He takes another sip, this one more moderate, and purposefully ignores Antok’s smug expression.

Kolivan and Antok seem content to drink in silence. He follows suit and watches them covertly. Kolivan’s posture is a notch unbent from the military straightness he adopts during the strategy talks. Antok once again catches him staring, but this time he just lazily slits his eyes and tilts his head back, the corner of his mouth twitching up. It doesn’t feel unfriendly. 

If he’s going to ask questions, this might be the best chance he’ll get.

For a long, breathless moment, he considers asking about his mother, but in the end he swallows it down. He’s not sure sure what exactly he wants to say. Not sure if he wants to find her, or if she wants to be found. 

And there are other things he wants to know.

“You said when you came aboard that I had the choice to join the Blade.”

Kolivan considers him carefully. “The trial is normally given to initiate candidates. Its purpose is to weed out those who may become a liability on the field and those whose character is unsuited for the work the Blade does. Your circumstances were unusual, but you passed fairly.”

He frowns. “What happens when someone fails?”

“Most take up lower-risk civilian posts,” replies Antok.

“By the time a candidate may attempt the trial, they have already completed verification. Many of those who fail discreetly provide information, funds, and transportation that we rely on.” Kolivan elaborates.

“Oh.” He blinks against a tiny, intense flicker of relief under his breastbone. It’s not just the Blade then. There are others. Ordinary people in the Empire working against it. 

“Why did you decide to help us?” he asks slowly. “I thought you were all set to throw us out. Why did the trial change that?”

It’s been bothering him. Kolivan doesn’t look like he’s ever made an impulsive decision in his life. It doesn’t sort with his abrupt willingness to negotiate.

Kolivan studies Keith for a long moment. “The trial is designed to be punishing. Cruel, even, because the work we must do to resist the Empire is often difficult, and dangerous, and painful.” He pauses. “They say that a company’s worth is best measured by the actions of its soldiers. It is very easy to wish the Empire gone. It is much more difficult to make the hard choices necessary to remove it. Your trial suggested that Voltron was equipped to make those choices.”

He narrows his eyes. “That’s a lot to get out of one trial.”

Kolivan gives a slow, inscrutable blink. “Am I wrong?”

He gives it due consideration, but doesn’t have to think long. At this point, they’ve all been in position to make split-second decisions with lives riding on them. Everyone’s been exhausted and miserable and hurt. They all want to go home. And they’re all still here, throwing themselves at the Empire. He meets Kolivan’s eyes, remembers his mistake with Antok, and looks away. “No.”

“Hm.” Kolivan’s eyes close in the dark, and he takes a long sip from his cup.

After a moment Keith moves to do the same, but finds the cup empty. Antok pushes the teapot over to him.

* * *

The stomach pains never materialize.

He stares into the mirror in his quarters for a long time that night. He doesn’t look very galra. There are things he can pick out, now that he knows to look for them. His eyes are kind of purplish, and his hair’s got a blue undertone in the harsh lighting of the little bathroom. It probably explains the food intolerances and his fucked up teeth and his weird thick nails with their narrow beds. He can guess what those would look like if he ever stopped filing them down now.

If he had stayed with the garrison and made it to pilot, would he have washed out in the medical exam? 

He exhales a long slow breath and leans up against the wall. The garrison barely feels real. It’s hard to imagine himself as a lunar transport jockey, or even a research pilot now. 

It’s hard to imagine himself as a blade too. But right now it feels closer than the garrison.

He looks back in the mirror. He still doesn’t look very galra, but now that he knows it’s there, he can’t stop seeing it.


	8. Chapter 8

**_The Death of King Five-Eyes_ **

  
_When King Five-Eyes discovered the trick Thinker had played on him, he took up his arms and challenged him. They fought for five nights straight, but at last Thinker knelt at the King’s feet._

_“You will give me your red bronze mail, and your five-eyed helmet, and your hammer,” said the King, “that you shall never trouble me again.” And he took Thinker’s arms and banished him from his lands._

_Thinker wandered for five nights till at last he came to rest at the crossroads of Ulig. He sat himself upon a rock, heart heavy. “What am I to do? Without my red bronze mail, how shall I protect myself? Without my five-eyed helm, how shall I see my path clearly? Without my hammer, how shall I work my craft? What is Thinker without his arms?”_

_As he was sitting there Warlord came down the road. “Ho, traveler,” she said, not recognizing Thinker without his arms, “what troubles you so?”_

_“I’ve been defeated and my enemy has taken my most prized possessions. What am I to do?”_

_“Hah!” barked Warlord. “Come with me and I’ll show you how to spend your time! A sad sack like you needs a dose of drive and courage.”_

_Thinker considered this. “You might be right. I’ll come with you.”_

_“Good choice, traveler. What name do you go by?”_

_“Call me Stranger,” said Thinker, too embarrassed to be seen without his arms._

_So Thinker traveled with Warlord for a time, vanquishing foes and passing judgment on the unjust. And it was good, but always he missed the weight of his mail and the sight of his helm and the grip of his hammer. At last, he went to Warlord and told her he must go._

_“Ah, well, if you must,” said Warlord. “Take my pennant with you at least, to remember our travels.”_

_So Thinker took the pennant and went back to the crossroads at Ulig. As he sat there, Soldier came marching down the road._

_“Friend, what ails you? I can see you’re a fellow with troubles.”_

_“My enemy has taken my most prized possessions. What am I to do without them?”_

_“Well,” said Soldier, “it does no good to dwell on your problems. Come along with me and you’ll be well occupied.”_

_“Maybe you’re right,” said Thinker._

_“Capital! What are you called?”_

_“Call me Stranger.”_

_And so Thinker traveled with Soldier for a while, working tirelessly and obeying orders. And it was good work, but always he missed the weight of his mail and the sight of his helm and the grip of his hammer. Eventually, he could bear it no more and told Soldier he must go._

_“Do we really have to part ways?” said Soldier. “I will miss your company. Take my copper cup with you at least, to remember our work together.”_

_So Thinker took the cup and went to back to the crossroads at Ulig. As he was sitting there, Liar came down the road, decked out in garish finery._

_“You look like a man with troubles aplenty. Tell me traveler, what’s happened to you?”_

_“My enemy’s taken my most prized possessions. Without them, how can I carry on?”_

_Liar smiled his crafty grin. “Now listen. I’ve been in trouble all my life, but I don’t let it slow me down. What you need is a distraction - come along with me and I’ll provide it!”_

_Thinker pondered that. “Maybe there’s something to what you’re saying.”_

_“Friend, would I lie? Tell me, what’s your name?”_

_“Call me Stranger.”_

_So Thinker and Liar traveled together, playing tricks and winning bets and making mischief. And it was good, but always he missed the weight of his mail and the sight of his helm and the grip of his hammer. At last, he told Liar that they must part ways._

_“Must you?” said Liar, “it’ll be strange to work alone again. Well, take my dice then and think of our travels when you cast them.”_

_So Thinker took the dice and went back to the crossroads at Ulig. As he was sitting there, the Witch came down the road._

_“Well, traveler, it’s been a long while since I’ve seen anyone at Ulig. What have you suffered to come here?”_

_“My enemy has taken my most prized possessions. What am I without them?”_

_The Witch rapped her claws together with a sound like falling rain. “You won’t learn the answers to questions like that sitting at the crossroads. Come with me and I’ll show you where to look.”_

_Thinker bowed his head. “Perhaps you’re right.”_

_“Perhaps I am. What should I call you?”_

_“Call me Stranger.”_

_So Thinker went with the Witch, and they delved into secrets and walked hidden ways. And it was good, but always he missed the weight of his mail and the sight of his helm and the grip of his hammer. Finally, he told the Witch that he could no longer go with her._

_“Then go you must,” said the Witch, and she pulled one of her long teeth from her jaw. “Take this with you to remember our travels by.”_

_So Thinker took the tooth and went back to the crossroads at Ulig. He sat there for a long time in thought, the pennant, the cup, the dice, and the tooth laid out before him. “Ah,” he said to himself at last, “it is no good. I shall have to win back my arms.” And he set to work._

_He took Warlord’s pennant in hand and wrought it into a fine cloak. Soldier’s cup he beat into a helm. Liar’s dice and the Witch’s tooth he worked into a new hammer. When he was done, he took them up and went in search of King Five-Eyes._

_The King met him on the plains at Oruntha wearing Thinker’s mail and helm and hammer._

_“Give me back my arms,” said Thinker, “and I’ll never trouble you again.”_

_“Hah,” laughed the King. “I know you, Thinker, and you can no more resist trouble than the ocean can resist the tide. I’ll see you dead before I give them back.”_

_“Then so be it,” said Thinker, and leapt upon the King._

_The King struck, but Thinker dodged and Warlord’s pennant blinded him. He struck again, but Soldier’s copper cup turned the blow. Again he struck out. Thinker parried, and the weight of Liar’s dice twisted the King’s blow aside. The King stumbled back and Thinker lunged in, and the Witch’s tooth bit straight to the King’s heart. King Five-Eyes stumbled and fell, and there he died._

_Thinker poured a libation and set the fires, and when it was done, he took back his arms. He put on his red bronze mail and his five-eyed helm and took up his hammer, but try as he might, he could not rest easy. The weight of the mail bowed his shoulder, and the helm pinched at his temples, and the hammer would not settle in his grip._

_So he took off his arms and considered, and finally took out his tools. He took the rings of the mail and sewed them to the pennant’s edge. The helmet’s five eyes he worked into the helm of Soldier’s cup. And he set Liar’s dice on the haft of his hammer and Witch’s tooth on the head. At last, he took up his new arms and found them right, and he wears them to this day._


	9. Chapter 9

They finally have a plan. It comes with a tight timeline and a long list of tasks to accomplish. They’ll have to split up and move fast to make it work. But for all that, it feels concrete and thought out in a way that most of their previous plans haven’t. Kolivan and Antok give it their seal of approval, and even Allura is cautiously optimistic. It finally feels as if they’ve stopped drifting and locked onto a target, and the whole castle hums with nervous energy, just waiting for the trigger to click home.

* * *

When Keith enters the mess that night, Antok and Kolivan are talking quietly. They pause when he comes in, and each gives him a perfunctory nod. After a second of hesitation, he returns it and takes a seat on the bench. 

There are three cups on the table this time. He stares for a moment, and then carefully pours for himself. Kolivan’s eyes flick over to him, but neither comments on the action. The conversation resumes.

“It’s complicated, Kolivan,” Antok says quietly. “High-risk.” 

Kolivan is quiet for a moment. “It is. But we won’t have the opportunity again. Not with an agent on the inside.”

Antok grimaces. “Could still be a long road to Gevra.”

Keith starts. “Like the story?” he blurts out before he can stop himself. Kolivan and Antok both turn to stare, and he grips the cup with both hands and wishes desperately to sink into the floor. A long, profoundly awkward silence stretches out before Kolivan finally takes pity on him.

“You know the story?”

“There was a translation in the castle archives.” He pauses, but they’re still waiting expectantly. Hesitantly, he continues. “There’s a soldier going to Gevra. Thinker and the Witch make a bet that they can get him to leave the road and they play all these tricks on him. But he keeps misunderstanding or missing the point and screwing up their plans.” He clears his throat. “Finally they decide they’re going to have to chase him off the road. They both try and ambush him, but they wind up fighting each other instead and the soldier makes it to Gevra.”

There’s another small silence. “That is a very old version of that story,” says Kolivan at last. 

Antok rests his chin in his hand, eyes half-slit. “The state entertainment channels run _The Road to Gevra_ sometimes. Children’s programming.”

Keith blinks, momentarily blindsided by the concept of galra children’s programming, but Antok continues, his voice matter-of-fact. “In that version of the story, the Emperor sends his most loyal soldier on a mission to Gevra. Thinker and Liar make a bet that they can distract him. But each time one of them tries, the soldier thinks about how vital his mission is and how much the Emperor is counting on him, and he gives them a little speech about how loyalty to the Empire leaves no room for distractions. Eventually, Thinker and Liar decide to ambush him. The soldier tries to fight them off, but they’re too much for him. He’s just about to be beaten when the Emperor’s Witch appears. She tells him that the Emperor has been watching his progress and has sent her to deal with the people who have been making trouble for him. And then she and the soldier defeat Thinker and Liar. The soldier completes his mission and receives a commendation from the Emperor himself.”

“Oh,” he says quietly.

“I prefer your version,” says Antok drily.

Kolivan gives a humming sigh. “A task on the road to Gevra is one beset by difficulties and complications. A process that is difficult to control and hard to predict.”

“And you think that’s the plan we have.”

“It could be,” says Kolivan. “There are a lot of factors in play. A number of unknowns.” He watches Keith carefully, expression neutral. “What is your opinion?”

“Me?”

“You know the plan. You know your team.” 

He frowns into his half-empty cup, thumb running up and down the smooth ridges of its sides. “It is complicated,” he says finally. “A lot of things have to go right, and if any of them don’t, the whole thing falls apart. But none of it’s impossible. There’s nothing in there we can’t do. It’s a risk, but anything we do will be a risk.” He pauses. “At some point we have to stop just reacting to what the Empire throws at us. We have to take action.”

There’s a considering silence, and then Kolivan hums into the darkness and meets Antok’s eyes across the table. “A good answer,” he says quietly, and refills Keith’s cup.

* * *

Keith finds Shiro in the rec room, half-watching a colorful, incomprehensible altean drama while he gingerly lubricates the joints of the prosthetic. He settles himself on the other end of the couch.

“Hey.”

“Hey.” Shiro gives him half a grin and carefully swipes the brush under his wrist joint and rotates his hand. On the screen, a man in an enormous hat sings a fast patter song extolling the virtues of his paramour.

“I, uh.” He trails to a halt, tries again. “I wanted to talk to you.”

Shiro’s hand halts its motion. Carefully, he sets the brush down. The screen goes dark. “What’s going on?”

He pauses, orders his thoughts carefully. “Even if this plan works, the Empire won’t just go down without a fight.”

“No,” Shiro says slowly. “We’ll still have a lot of work to do.”

He takes a breath. “I want to work with the Blade after.”

Shiro goes still. “Are you thinking about what Kolivan said? About you having a choice to join them?”

He hesitates for a second. “I don’t know. I don’t want to leave you guys. But if I can do both… maybe. Even if I’m just their contact for us.”

Shiro frowns into the distance and flexes his hand absently. “Are you sure?” He pauses and the frown deepens. “They seem… pretty severe.”

_Severe_ is a good word for it. Shiro’s not wrong. But… “They’re not that bad. I’ve been talking to them.”

Shiro blinks. “You have?”

He shrugs. “They like to have - um. I guess it’s tea - in the mess during the night cycle.”

“They do?” Shiro looks fascinated.

“It’s pretty good.” He pauses, scowls. “Antok keeps calling me ‘kid’.”

He can hear Shiro choking back a laugh. “All right. Maybe they’re not that bad.” He sobers. “The work they do is dangerous, though.”

“So is Voltron.”

Shiro sighs. “I guess I can’t argue that.” He pauses for a long moment. “You’re right that we’ll need a liaison if we keep working with the Blade. And if that’s what you want to do, I’ll help you do it. But I don’t want you to feel like you have to do it just because you passed their trial.”

“Because I’m part galra, you mean.” The words fall into the room like stones dropped into a still pond.

Shiro gives him a measuring look. “Yeah.”

He leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees. It draws the sleeves of his jacket partially over his hands and he runs his thumbs back and forth over the smooth stitching on the inside of the cuffs while he orders his thoughts. “That’s… something I’m going to have to get used to, I guess. It’s not going to go away or stop mattering. And I don’t want the only thing I know about it to be the Empire.” He exhales out through his teeth. “So, yeah. I want to do it.”

There’s quiet from Shiro’s end of the couch, and then he hears him shift. He starts a little as the warmth of Shiro’s left hand clasps over his shoulder. “Okay,” Shiro says. “We’ll work something out with them.”

“Thanks.”

There’s quiet between them for a few seconds. Shiro’s hand squeezes gently and retreats.

“Hey,” he says softly. “I’ve been meaning to say. I really admire how you’ve handled all this.”

He blinks. “What for?”

“Finding something like that out must have been a shock. Plenty of people would be scared and angry. And I’m not saying you’re having an easy time with it, but you’re asking questions. Trying to figure it out.”

He crosses his arms. “It’s not like I can change it.”

“I don’t want you to change it.” Shiro says the words calmly, but there’s weight behind them.

He considers that for a long moment, thumb passing back and forth over his knuckles. There’s the Empire and its horrific history. The ordinary people it’s crushed under its boot, the terrible damage it’s done to Shiro and Pidge and Allura and Coran. The people like Sendak and Zarkon, who see that as their right. 

But there’s also the Blade. Kolivan and Antok talking in the mess at night with an extra cup on the table. Old stories that might just be meant to make people laugh. His mother, maybe, leaving something important behind for a child she might never see again.

It doesn’t balance the scales, but it’s enough. He can work with it. He can make something _better_ of it.

At last he lets out a breath. “I don’t think I want to change it either.”

Shiro’s voice is quiet, but his smile is blinding. “Good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's the end of this one! I hope you enjoyed this kind of weird story - thank you for reading!


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